Laura Dowling

But in the reality, I was like, oh, my God, like, and it looks so professional.

And it was only when you were halfway down the paragraph.

I'm like, hang on.

They just said I brainwashed children to be gay.

Like that couldn't be further from the truth.

But Facebook and Google at the time came back to say, this is free speech and there's nothing to see or do here.

And it's still alive and active.

It's crazy.

And it's wild in that sense, because, you know, I go into schools and I do Q&As and I've been doing that since I entered into the Rose in 2014.

And I talk about everything that is.

I give a little overview into who I am and where I'm coming from, the work I'm doing.

I keep it apolitical because for me, I think it's so important.

And I always say every young person in this room or adult needs to go away and do their own homework about what I'm saying, who I am as a person, because it's really important that we preserve and grow critical thinking at this point.

the end of the day regardless whether we agree with each other or not democracy still has to be preserved as romantic as it sounds and you know sometimes question comes out about my sexuality sometimes question comes out about my belief on body agency or autonomy sometimes it comes out about my my activists around our trans community or what I think about something that's topical at the moment and it's wild to me that that always comes into question because you have a small cohort that believes

many of us women are allies just should sit in the corner and shut up it's like wild but also do they have a problem with you going into schools and doing Q&A's because you're gay and they think oh my god Jesus that's so and it's so sad because to your point like being

Gay has been around for generations, like generations, like no gay kid woke up.

I can tell you this, as someone who fought for a really long time internally, I came out as late in the gay scene.

And for the longest time, you really do question like it's easier to make a different choice.

You'll get over it.

You'll grow out of it.